#Wayne Barlowe

[retroscifiart]

Art by the legendary Wayne Barlowe

[thewindowofthesummerhouse]

Wayne Barlowe

[vintagerpg]

Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials was well received and won a couple of awards (and a second edition, I think in ’87?). It took a little while for the sequel to emerge: Barlowe’s Guide to Fantasy hit shelves in 1996.

Even though I am not super widely read in either fantasy or science fiction, Barlowe’s fantasy book is the one I really vibe on. Maybe because it allows him to do stuff like Grendel from Beowulf and Gorice from The Worm Ouroboros. Wouldn’t have expected Gideon Winter, the antagonist from Peter Straub’s odd novel Floating Dragon to be included, but he was. Other surprises are the Psammead from Five Children and It and the Saw Horse from Oz.

One of the coolest things about these books is the fold-out size comparison charts. I love a good size-comparison (and again, this is a big feature of those Petersen’s Guides for Call of Cthulhu, and I am sure it came directly from here).

[xanderomeister]

Knifehead appreciation post

Btw, here is a gallery of Pacific Rim concept art. There are also some other storyboards floating around, iirc?

[thevaultofretroscifi]

[sandmandaddy69]

Wayne Barlowe

[ordheist]

NEW RELEASE

8 page mini zine (9.5x7cm) in my store. little alien guidebook in an indecipherable language, but within are some human scrawlings to guide the inheritor of this booklet to safety.

only £2.50! check it out https://ordheist.bigcartel.com/product/you-ll-need-this-zine

[gebo4482]

Hellraiser (Unused) by Wayne Barlowe

[70sscifiart]

Wayne Barlowe

[mcpieandhaggis]

Two-Flag Bombardier

I'll be sharing a few creations from my work on a Spec Evo project that takes heavy inspiration from Expedition: Being an Account in Words and Artwork of the 2358 A.D. Voyage to Darwin IV, by Wayne Barlowe.

It is set on the Planet Mendel VI and mirrors most features of Darwin IV, with a few select new biomes and all new Fauna.

This is an aberrant representative of the 'Lopes' (a group of mainly herbivorous Tripedaliens). It uses it's large frontal sonar organs to send out high frequency 'pings' that are able to disorient potential predators.

[antediluvianechoes]

Nanotyrannus, Wayne Barlowe, 1995

The juvenile rex prowls the beach for stranded fish and sea things. Alas, the waves provide nothing today, not even a storm-tossed shark. After some steps across the wet sand, he spies a pterosaur skeleton, half buried like hastily abandoned picnic knives, but it has already been scraped clean by crabs and flies. Something else stirs to the rex's left. Not far away stands a morsel of a thing. It does not appear fast, nor does it have horns or scutes or talons or fangs. In fact, it appears to be the most defenseless creature imaginable. With catlike silence, the tyrannosaur zeroes his red eyes on this new prey. It is you he sees, Reader. Run!

[retroscifiart]

Art by Wayne D Barlowe ‘Alien Flora’ from In The Stream of the Stars: The Soviet-American Space Art Book (1990)

[thewindowofthesummerhouse]

Wayne Barlowe

[vintagerpg]

Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials (1979) is a fun little book that looks at aliens from a variety of science fiction stories through the (slightly) in-universe framing of a field guide, complete with notes on ecology and biological functions.

Artist Wayne Barlowe’s selections are an interesting cross-section of the genre (I don’t recognize a lot of them, honestly) and his interpretations (of the ones I do recognize) always walk the fine line between capturing something essential that I pictured in my mind’s eye while also being surprising or unexpected in many ways. Among the beasties I did not photograph are the Overlords from Childhood’s End, the Puppeteers from Ringworld, the Izchel from Wrinkle in Time, the Masters from the Tripod books and Ursula Le Guin’s Athshean.

In a way, the Guide feels like an extension of the larger interest in fantastic art in the ‘70s, embodied most in the Gnomes, Fairies and Giants books. It, and its Fantasy companion (see tomorrow) certainly wouldn’t come out today, but for me, they’re just amazing. They gave Barlowe a whole book to draw monsters and aliens; monster and alien enthusiasts like me got a pile of rad illustrations to look at; and a stack of sci fi writers got low-key advertising for their works. Wins down the line.

Worth mentioning that this is likely a direct inspiration for Call of Cthulhu’s pair of Petersen’s Field Guides (Cthulhu Monsters and Dreamlands), right down to little nuances of layout formatting. I would bet that they were also on someone’s mind when the Ecology articles began to appear in Dragon Magazine (those started in ’83 with the Piercer).

[funstealer]

The Streets of Dis (Barlowe’s Inferno) by Wayne Barlowe

[vermilllionsands]

Wayne Barlow